Liz Cheney has been making the rounds at Wyoming political events this spring and her desire to move back to the state has Republicans from Cheyenne to Washington buzzing about a potential future campaign.

With little fanfare, Cheney, a former State Department official and the eldest daughter of the former vice president, has spoken at six events in different corners of the sprawling state this year. She has been especially busy on the GOP dinner circuit. Cheney has already hit four county Lincoln Day Dinners and keynoted the dinner following the Wyoming GOP convention last month. She also accompanied and appeared on stage with her father when he made his first public appearance following his heart transplant at the state convention.

Cheney is currently a McLean, Va., resident and there has long been speculation among Republicans that she would eventually run for office there. But Cheney, a mother of five, is seeing her oldest child off to college this year and, along with her husband Philip, has long considered returning to the state that her father represented in the House. They hope to buy a house in Jackson Hole, where her parents also have a residence, but the move is not a sure thing.

Still, Cheney’s schedule and some of her rhetoric suggests someone who is eyeing an eventual campaign.

“Let me tell you why Wyoming’s style of politics is so important,” Cheney said last month at the Park County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, according to the Cody Enterprise. “There is a personal touch here that gets amazing people into office.”

Talking to local radio station KGOS-KERM after speaking to Republicans at the Goshen County Lincoln-Reagan dinner, on the opposite end of the state from Cody, Cheney explained that her father was most proud of his days representing Wyoming.

“He has said to me that there is no title that he felt prouder of professionally than when he was called ‘The Gentleman from Wyoming,’” Cheney said, adding that her dad was also honored to serve as defense secretary and vice president.

Sounding every bit the aspiring politician, Cheney has demurred when asked about her ambitions.

But Wyoming politicos say local friends of Cheney are encouraging her to look at a run and helping her garner local press coverage by notifying Wyoming media outlets about her attendance at events. Few think she would be making stops in every corner of the state if she weren’t at least mulling a future run.

“She’s running up a lot of asphalt,” said Shawn Whitman, a Laramie native and former chief of staff for two Wyoming senators, of Cheney’s schedule. “This is planting seeds of thought in people’s minds. There’s nobody I know that goes to those events unless they have a position in the party or they’re trying to run for office.”

Friends of Cheney emphasize that she has no set plan to run and that she and her husband, an attorney, still need to reconcile issues related to their jobs and their children’s education before they can even move.

None in Cheney’s circle wanted to speak on the record, but her ambitions for public office have been more openly discussed of late as she treks back to Wyoming.

“She’s putting herself in a position now so she can eventually do it,” said one fellow Washington Republican.

The speculation in Wyoming is that she could launch a campaign as early as 2014, when Sen. Mike Enzi’s (R-Wyo.) term is up. Enzi, who will be 70 then, has not indicated whether he’s running for re-election. It’s highly unlikely that Cheney would run against him in a primary. But the betting among Washington Republicans is that Enzi may retire if Republicans don’t take control of the Senate this November and he doesn’t take the gavel on the HELP committee, where he’s the ranking member.

“The only thing he’s said is he’s looking forward to being Chairman of HELP if we get the majority back,” said Enzi spokesman Daniel Head. “He loves his job and feels like he’s making a difference.”

Neither of the other two members of the Wyoming congressional delegation – Sen. John Barrasso (R) and Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R) — is likely to move home anytime soon. But both Lummis and GOP Gov. Matt Mead, whose first term is up in 2014, could also look at the Senate seat should Enzi call it a career. If she wanted to avoid such a primary, Cheney could run for the at-large House seat should Lummis attempt to move to the Senate.

An attorney, Cheney served during the Bush administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Since President Barack Obama’s election, she has been an outspoken critic of the administration on national security both as a Fox News contributor and through an advocacy group she co-founded, Keep America Safe.

But in recent months, her focus has been as local as national. Just this week, she spoke to the Casper Chamber of Commerce in central Wyoming one night and to the Uinta County Republicans near the Utah border the next.

Ron Wild, Chairman of the Uinta County GOP, said they filled up all 175 chairs they put out for their dinner.

“The response was very positive, very favorable,” Wild said.

Cheney spent much of her childhood split between living in the Washington, D.C., area and returning with her father to Wyoming. Were she to run, she would almost certainly face a primary challenge and charges of carpet-bagging. Her father overcame similar claims when in 1978 he moved back to Wyoming following his time as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff and captured the state’s at-large House seat when it came open that year. The situation is not exactly analogous, though. The elder Cheney spent most of his childhood in Casper and graduated from the University of Wyoming, while his daughter attended schools in suburban Washington and attended college in Colorado.

Jim King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming, pointed to the failure of former Sen. Alan Simpson’s son to win a gubernatorial primary two years ago in noting the limitations of being a legacy candidate.

“The Cheney name is still familiar, of course, but that doesn’t mean she’d be automatic,” said King.

One Wyoming Republican insider said it would be considerably less, noting that all three members of the current delegation first paid their dues by serving in the legislature.

“And folks who run from Jackson tend to lose,” said this Republican, noting that the wealthy enclave is not the best staging ground for a statewide run.

But Wild, the county chair, said Cheney would get a fair hearing, no more and no less, if she eventually ran.

“She’d get same reception anyone else would,” said Wild. “She is pretty well-known in the state and she’s very articulate and very intelligent.”